Charles Fourier

François Marie Charles Fourier (April 7, 1772 – October 10, 1837) was a French philosopher and an important early socialist thinker later associated with “utopian socialism”.

An influential thinker, some of Fourier’s social and moral views, held to be radical in his lifetime, have become mainstream thinking in modern society. Fourier is, for instance, credited with having originated the word feminism in 1837.

Fourier’s social views and proposals inspired a whole movement of intentional communities and among those include the founding of the community of Utopia, Ohio; La Reunion near present-day Dallas, Texas; the North American Phalanx in Red Bank, New Jersey; Brook Farm in West Roxbury, Massachusetts (where Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the founders); the Community Place and Sodus Bay Phalanx in New York State, and several other communities in the United States. Later Fourier inspired a diverse array of revolutionary thinkers and writers.